One of our customers called to see what we could do about his under performing dryers.  His Laundromat customers were having to waiting for dryers and the time required to dry a load of clothes was taking too long.

Diagnosis:  I visited the Laundromat and determined that there was a significant shortage of drying capacity.  In addition the dryer exhaust dust system was not up to factory specs and the make-up air was in-sufficient.  The laundromat is an older established store that has been equipped to the max with washers and has no space for additional dryers.

Suggestion:  The Laundromat needs additional drying capacity and the challenge is how to gain the additional drying capacity in the same limited space.  I suggested replacing the 7 American stack dryers with 4 Huebsch 30 lbs. and 3 Huebsch 45 lbs. Stack dryers.  This would increase the drying capacity by an additional 90 lbs. of drying capacity.  The only way we can accomplish the dryer increase was to physically remove 1 - 18 lbs. washer.  The loss of one washer was not a sacrifice because the store had plenty of small washers.  The ability to gain 90 extra pounds of drying capacity and to reduce the washing capacity by 18 lbs. was a win - win trade-off.

Execution:  Pre-Installation work consisted of removing an existing window and installing a make-up air grill, cleaning the existing dryer exhaust duct and replacing the existing exhaust cover with 2 elbows (to reduce dryer back pressure).  On Monday morning, HK shut down the Laundromat and disconnected and removed all of the existing dryers.  HK also modified the existing dryer exhaust ducts (to work with the new dryers) and enlarged the existing make-up air openings.  Tuesday was the physically moving out of the old dryers and installing the new dryers.  Tuesday also consisted of leveling and venting the new dryers, hook-up gas and electrical service.  In addition, HK built a wall around the dryers and sheet rocked the wall.  Wednesday consisted of installing FRP (plastic fiberglass wall covering) on the sheetrock walls.  HK also testing & programming the dryers and performed clean-up.  

Summary:  The laundromat customers are very pleased with the new dryers and the additional drying capacity.  The dryers are performing far better than the old dryers and now the Laundromat thru-put has been drastically increased to accommodate the increased customer volume.  The store volume can be significantly increased without creating a bottlenecks with the dryers.   HK helped this customer correct an existing problem with his dryers and increased the thru-put and productivity of the Laundromat.